


Applied Chemistry

by katybar



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Asexual!Sherlock, Asexuality, First Time, also risotto, because of course, molecular gastronomy, negotiation, only a little angst, sexual!John
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-02
Updated: 2013-11-05
Packaged: 2017-12-31 05:40:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1027907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katybar/pseuds/katybar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At first, John had seemed quite taken with their lifestyle, and content as long as he could meet women for the occasional shag.  But some quick calculations and cross-references of John’s schedule suggested that now John wanted more.  And he was going about it in an aggressive manner all too likely to succeed.  </p><p>The first few times it happened, Sherlock treated John to a blow-by-blow recounting of his date the next morning, but that made little difference except that now John was sometimes gone for the entire night and right through his clinic shift, and Sherlock had to make his deductions after half the evidence had been erased the next afternoon. An amusing challenge, yes, but hardly a satisfactory situation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Custard

Life was dangerous, Sherlock knew that. Their lives in particular. He was not a safe person, and neither was John.

Still, things had gone too far this time. Something had to be done.

His first text of the evening, the address of the abandoned print shop hosting the suspected trafficking ring, had been ignored. His second text, a “looks dangerous, dress accordingly”, likewise. Only the third text, a terse “extremely”, had finally extracted John, who showed up looking pre-occupied.

Luckily the “extremely” part had still panned out well. While John knocked out the suspects in a business-like way, Sherlock found himself sprayed by an unknown substance with mildly hallucinogenic effects and gashed by a well-handled letter opener. When he woozily suggested that John should return to his date in time for cheesecake, he got a familiar look of exasperation which may or may not have been mitigated with fondness.

John stitched him up with only a few extra jabby parts, and fetched an extra blanket for sleeping on the couch. Sherlock did feel a little sorry about that part, but after he’d mistaken a street sign for a hippopotamus and tried to talk the wallpaper into changing colors, he supposed that John had made the eminently logical choice.

\---

The next morning Sherlock woke with a lurching feeling only partly explained by the lingering effects of the drugs, and several hours in which to obsess.

Up to now he had paid little attention to John’s comings and goings, as long as he was available when Sherlock needed him, which was frequently. At first, John had seemed quite taken with their lifestyle, and content as long as he could meet women for the occasional shag. That suited Sherlock fine.

But some quick calculations and cross-references of John’s schedule suggested that now John wanted more. And he was going about it in an aggressive manner all too likely to succeed -- flirting, dating, even bringing women to their flat where they quickly disappeared, giggling, up the stairs. Sherlock supposed that it was partly his fault, what with his trick with the cane and all.

The first few times it happened, Sherlock treated John to a blow-by-blow recounting of his date the next morning, but that made little difference except that now John was sometimes gone for the entire night and right through his clinic shift, and Sherlock had to make his deductions after half the evidence had been erased the next afternoon. An amusing challenge, yes, but hardly a satisfactory situation.

It was time for a new approach. Applied chemistry, if you will.

A good old-fashioned way to a man’s heart.

\---

“Sherlock!!” he heard John’s voice approaching from the living room. “Do you hear a strange hissing—“

“Noise?” supplied Sherlock helpfully. Absently he noted that he’d just incinerated a shopping receipt. He hoped that Mrs. Hudson would overlook the scorch mark if he positioned an Erlenmeyer flask over it.

“Bloody hell, Sherlock, are you trying to get us evicted?” John sounded more alarmed than endeared, so Sherlock lowered the torch repentantly, but that didn’t help much because “Toaster oven, Sherlock!! You absolutely cannot set the toaster oven on fire again.” John was trying to broadcast urgency and stealth simultaneously. Sherlock rolled his eyes and moved an additional one and a half inches away from the toaster oven.

“Don’t tell me, someone’s been murdered by mini propane torch…?” John persisted.

“Broolay,” Sherlock informed him.

“What?!”

“I am in fact making crème brulée for Mrs. Hudson and myself,” Sherlock attempted to look angelic while brushing at the remainder of the grocery receipt. “Should be ready by tea. You’re welcome to stay if you’re not busy.”

“You’re making what?”

“Crème brulée,” Sherlock enunciated with a huff. “A custard of egg yolk, cream, and sugar, traditionally finished with a light application of flame from a torch such as the one which I am holding. It’s chemistry, John.”

“You. Custard. I don’t know why I didn’t think of that.”

“Neither do I, considering my French heritage and the abundance of evidence scattered--“ Sherlock stumbled to a halt. John had been looking intrigued, but already he was recovering. Amused, but not tempted.

“Save some for me, yeah? I’ve got a date.”


	2. Melon

Sherlock did not precisely like cooking, but it did afford him the opportunity to acquire new toys, so after the crème brulée fiasco (John had come home from his date the next morning _whistling_ , for god’s sake, the custard altogether forgotten, and Mrs. Hudson had caught a glimpse of ash under the flask and ferreted out the rest) Sherlock set his sights on molecular gastronomy.  It had everything he could want, including bite-sized portions and plenty of interesting new gadgets to buy.

Gadgets could be ordered online, but ingredients needed to be bought in person, the book was quite clear on that point.  Sherlock had always been happy for food to simply appear pre-bought.  He assumed it was John, since Mrs. Hudson was vociferously not a housekeeper.  Sherlock considered making out a shopping list, leaving it on the kitchen table, and hoping for the best, but John might get suspicious.

And he couldn’t very well go on his own, having deleted a great quantity of information on acquiring ingredients just after moving to Baker Street.

So he waited until the milk got low.  Then he waited for John to mention going round to pick up a few items.  Then he got out his coat and scarf and met John by the door. 

John blinked at him but allowed him to tag along.  Sherlock bought a slice a watermelon, a half kilo of bacon, and box of toothpicks.  John bought milk, tea, bread, tinned beans, eggs, tuna, butter, and a trendy new brand of Greek yogurt with blood orange and passion fruit.

It was the yogurt that set Sherlock’s teeth on edge.   John never ate yogurt. 

\---

The next morning, Sherlock assembled his new emulsifier and ran tests on a variety of common ingredients, but stopped regretfully when he got to the human ears in the unlabeled butter tub.  No doubt John would have qualms.  Not that he would have served the ears, ever. 

That afternoon Lestrade called with a case, a database manager (and good work that Sherlock could type  web searches with the phone still in his pocket, because really, you can know from the underside of a man’s wrist that he works on a computer all day, but what he does on that computer leaves precious few physical clues) shot with an honest-to-goodness arrow in an overgrown car park.  Sherlock and John spent a satisfying two days hunting down bowmakers and pawnshop owners, and Sherlock deferred to John’s expertise in deciding which broken window the archer must have been shooting from, and afterwards they found a footprint and a bit of cigarette ash on the landing which led to an ambush after which John managed to tie the man’s hands with his own bowstring.

The next morning, after a bout of furious texting, John offered the yogurt to Mrs. Hudson, which made Sherlock quietly happy.

\---

That afternoon, John appeared in his going out jacket just as Sherlock began emulsifying the watermelon.  John looked bemused but sounded unconvinced that disposal by emulsification was a viable criminal option, although Sherlock vigorously denied having tested that hypothesis, which John could have checked easily by counting the ears in the fridge. John looked faintly disgusted when Sherlock showed him the watermelon recipe, but leaned against the doorframe so long that he finally sat down to watch in comfort.

Eighty minutes later, the bacon was crisping nicely on its toothpick swings, and Sherlock piped in the  watermelon emulsion and egg yolk bubbles and John pronounced it “not terrible, actually” and ate 4 more mouthful-sized servings.  Sherlock had two before Mrs. Hudson came to remind them that she was not their housekeeper and Sherlock shooed her out the door, although not before pressing the several remaining bacon swings on her.

John mentioned that he liked Italian himself.

\---

Sleeping.  Eating.  Fucking. 

Three things that Sherlock was rather pleased with himself for, largely, avoiding.  And he had the numbers to back it up. 

Sherlock could go 53 hours without so much as a catnap, had done it once in a case that involved two footchases, an interrogation, a bit of brilliant deduction at the 51 hour mark, just to keep the suspect in custody, _and_ he’d finished off a piece of tricky pipetting (right before setting the toaster oven on fire, which is easier to do than it sounds) before finally succumbing to sleep. 

John had been down for the count after the first 21 hours, although Sherlock would excuse that, would absolutely not even secretly ridicule John, who’d been coping with a sprained ankle and two cracked ribs from the first footchase.  Hadn’t stopped John from trying to mother-hen him away from the petri dishes, though, and had certainly taken nothing away from the inventiveness of his language (and Sherlock could bask in John’s verbal pyrotechnics all day, if truth be told) when he discovered the toaster oven had been on fire for a good 3 minutes while Sherlock finished measuring reagents.

Eating, that was even easier.  The body of a six foot tall man contains enough energy for days of deducing, sprinting, interrogating, and pipetting, with apparently some left over for fire-fighting.  (“John, I need some help in the kitchen,” Sherlock had called quite clearly.  “I’m busy, Sherlock, give me a minute,” John had answered.  After a half a minute, Sherlock had repeated “John, you really should come…” and John had responded “Busy, Sherlock.  I do have an actual independent life going on over here” so Sherlock had waited a full minute before calling “John, I—“ to which John had huffed “alright, fine, good, what’s the problem?” and then had become quite verbal about  god-damned scorch marks on the fucking ceiling, and the relative danger values of needing a pen versus setting kitchen appliances on fire.)

Sherlock knew how it went.  The first 36 hours, a slight giddiness and a welcome bit of extra free time.  For the next 36 hours, there was clarity, euphoria, and lightning-fast reflexes, except at the 20 minute intervals marked by bouts of intestine-cramping drive to put something, anything, into his mouth.  John came in handy here, as Sherlock had learned that allowing John to bully him into one of his  occasional cuppas could prolong the not-eating by another two days.  In fact it got harder and harder to start eating again – because the getting there wasn’t easy, after all, and the urge to find out what happens next, what was around this particular corner, was so strong.  And because evading the increasingly subtle and tempting offers from John – half a poached egg cunningly forgotten amid the petri dishes looks like ambrosia to a man starving himself – that was half the fun.

And fucking, shagging, getting or giving pleasure, making love – that was the easiest of all.  An urge only, no biological necessity at all.  Of course he had experimented as a teenager.  Already at that age he knew what puzzles he wanted to solve, and knew that solving them would involve knowledge of certain processes.  So he went about it methodically, learned how pleasure worked, conducted experiments on himself – temperature, light, duration – had even written some notes in a spidery adolescent code, had researched lists of physical tells and confirmed them on himself, and when he knew the what and the when and the how it felt, that was when he learned how to do without, how to reverse the process, how to take the tells of sexual arousal and turn them on themselves. 

Later, at uni, he intended to add to his database with a few strategically-chosen partners, but his plan derailed almost immediately, when the principles of pleasure he had derived so easily in isolation failed to apply in combination.  The same touch that he had quite clearly recorded as pleasureable on his own became awkward, cloying, aggravating, galling, and very deeply tiresome, and he abandoned the effort with the conviction that the data would be anomalous in any case. So it had been a very long time since Sherlock had indulged on his own, and forever since he had done so with another person.  And John had nothing to say about that.

\---

Sherlock was in a quandary.  Experimenting with Italian cuisine now would surely alert even John.  He would need an accomplice. Luckily Sherlock knew many people who owed him a favor, a few who pressed favors on him past owing, and a small-time criminal who often needed his name a bit clearer.  That’s how it happened that three mornings later, Sherlock was up early making ravioli, alternating between 3 differently shaped hand presses, a carved wooden rolling pin, and a shiny silver pasta machine with a crank handle and “property of Angelo” etched shakily into one side.  John eyed the tray as he made his tea, squinting, counting the rows, losing his place, starting over, and poking at a few of the odder shapes.  “It has to do with smuggling pieces of--“ Sherlock began, but John waved him silent.

“I’m sure it does,” he mumbled sleepily.

“But there should be enough for dinner, if you’d like to—“

“Absolutely.  No human parts, yeah?”

“John, I—“

“Right then, it’s a date,” John finished his tea and left Sherlock making ravioli number 137.


	3. Brunello

Ravioli went so well that Sherlock found alibis for stromboli, polenta, and porchetta as well.  By the third meal in a week, John was checking the kitchen of his own accord, and Sherlock was getting used to being corralled at a table and eating adult-sized portions. 

It was amusing in an odd, touching sort of way – John liked to watch him eat, and apparently he liked to watch John eat as well, except that where Sherlock looked hungry, John looked like a doctor who was finally getting his say.

After the porchetta, Sherlock left several cookbooks lying about the kitchen.  He never actually saw John looking at them, but a fine mist of talcum caught in the edge of the spine made the deductions simple.

\---

John pronounced the creamy risotto “brilliant” just before he dozed off on Sherlock’s thinking couch.

Earlier Sherlock had been fuming at the fussiness of peeling and scooping and slicing a half dozen miniscule artichokes (“very thinly”, insisted the cookbook, “like a truffle”, and although he was determined to treat knifework as dissection practice, even Sherlock’s not that good at deceiving himself), and a text from Lestrade had distracted him long enough that the risotto burned after the vermouth but before the stock, so he'd needed to start over again.

But it had improved. A texted demand for 10 mLs of black garlic oil had delayed John, and by the time he walked in the door (Sherlock knew from a glance that the garlic oil had only been located on the third try), Sherlock was just adding mint leaves and lemon zest to his prawns and artichokes.

"Oh, you're here, I suppose you may as well eat," he huffed, pleased to see that John was already sitting down to table with no invitation at all. He plunged into his own risotto, leaving John staring at an empty place. John squinted at him, rose and placed the diminutive bottle of garlic oil next to Sherlock’s glass with exaggerated care, and only then retrieved a plate from the cupboard. He had barely served himself when Sherlock rocketed out of his chair, snatched the lemon from him, and zested it carefully onto the mound.

"I am a doctor, you know," John sounded rueful. "I'm not totally inept with my hands."

It went like clockwork.  John spotted the bottle of brunello left on the counter, and poured himself a glass, then looked over at Sherlock inquiringly. Sherlock shrugged and found himself with a glass as well. They ate and John recounted a particularly gory broken ulna at the surgery that day. By the time John was refilling his plate, Sherlock had almost relaxed again.

After the artichokes were gone and he had drunk three glasses of brunello to Sherlock's one, John had smiled a bit fuzzily and suggested a movie. He eyes were closed almost before he got to the couch, but Sherlock followed anyway. It was his couch after all. He sat primly on one end and watched as John gradually relaxed into a sprawl, still smiling with his head tucked into one elbow. Sherlock steepled his hands and considered Lestrade's text, running scenarios and solutions in his mind, but it was like watching a jerky silent movie, not at all his normal electric flow from thought to thought. It was really quite difficult to think with John taking up half of the couch. Like a physical roadblock in his head. He scowled down at John and was surprised to see a hand, fingers, his own hand obviously, his own fingers running through John's hair. John's hair was soft, a bit coarser at his temples and the nape of his neck. Sherlock closed his eyes, wondering if he could identify the bones of John's skull from touch alone. He was really quite sleepy too. That must account for the jerky still-movie in his thoughts. It was ridiculous to be sleepy when he'd slept only the night before, but there it was. Perhaps artichokes or olive oil or mint had soporific effects. And John's hair, thousands upon thousands of individual strands, were tickling his palm. He thought he could probably count them by feel if he wasn't so sleepy. John Watson, he would say, did you realize that you average 335 hairs per square centimeter? And John would give him that quiet look that meant he wasn't sure whether to be impressed or worried, and Sherlock would veer off into murder weapons or the principles of retrofitting a secret room instead of saying I love you and wait, what? Secret rooms or murder weapons, then, or why beginners fail at lockpicking, or the best way to shoplift costume jewelry, although it wouldn't work if it was raining out, or essentials of surviving if kidnapped and locked in the boot of a small car...

\---

An hour later Sherlock opened his eyes again. He was fairly sure he had committed John’s entire skull to memory in his sleep, as well as the location of each of the coarser gray hairs that he possessed. If he ever needed to identify John based on a fragment of skull alone, he could do it, which was comforting in its own way, although he wouldn’t say that out loud, ever. John was curled with his back pressing into the couch cushion and the crown of his head just brushing Sherlock’s thigh. When Sherlock held still, he pushed the back of his head ever so slightly into Sherlock's palm.

So Sherlock did the most natural thing in the world.  He wriggled down until he was clamped to the very edge of the couch, only his palm still brushing against John’s scalp.  Then he closed his eyes and dozed off again like an albatross clinging to the edge of a cliff.

When he resurfaced, he realised John was talking to him, had been for some time.  Something about food in the army – its nutritional properties eclipsed by lack of inspiration, about heat and thirst, about passing the time by making lists of all the foods you intend to eat when you get back home, even though you know you never actually will do.  John recited a few of his -- raspberry lemonade and pistachio gelato, seven varieties of alcohol, tuna salad, and (which Sherlock supposed had started the monologue) risotto with parmesan or mushrooms or thyme and sausage. Plans for deduction flickered in Sherlock’s brain, but what his body did was this -- it was nuzzling at the top of John’s head, soft blond hair against the cheekbones that he never did understand the attraction of, and it was only when John’s voice stopped that he realized he was on shaky ground, and started to pull back, but John was humming a little, twisting so that Sherlock’s nose ended up mashed against John’s forehead. Sherlock’s gaze darted cross-eyed down to John’s face, then skittered away, and he found himself staring somewhat less cross-eyed at John’s chest, which wasn’t much better.  John’s eyes followed his, then he snorted in amusement.

“Fine.”  Sherlock blinked, wondering what John was agreeing to, as John’s fingers caught at the edge of his jumper, yanked it over his head, forcing Sherlock into a quick grab at the couch to avoid being dislodged. “I know what you want,” John grimaced.  As Sherlock tried to kickstart his brain, John calmly unbuttoned his shirt, oblivious to Sherlock’s precarious hold on couch or composure. “Right, then,” he concluded, leaning back, “look your fill,” and Sherlock realized he was meant to be looking at John’s scar.  Because apparently John had noticed, really John was quite perceptive when it came to certain things.  That wound, that scar – the actual physical presence hidden by horrid jumpers and stripey pullovers, and why did John never just wear a simple tee? – but its consequences so obvious to a man who couldn’t help but notice everything, every tiny inconsequential detail around him.  So Sherlock was not so much actually looking at the scar as he was comparing the real, flesh-and-blood scar with the one he’d created in his mind, built from every small observation of John, from the way his shoulder hitched sometimes when he took a gallon of milk from the fridge, to the way he twisted slightly to open a cab door.  He traced each line of the scar with his eyes, correcting the geometry and colouration of his private version as he went, soothed back into a languorous contentment again.

John didn’t object when he reached out with his hand as well, probing with his fingers like a blind man reading topography, testing resilience and elasticity, feeling for knots and granules and ridges, and John was perfectly still.  Back to dozing, apparently, which made it not too outrageous to do a comparison of sorts, John’s good shoulder against his bad shoulder, the skin soft and resilient on one, coiled tight and ropy on the other.  John sighed and shifted under his probing fingers, and Sherlock froze, fingertips barely brushing over him.

“Don’t stop now,” John murmured softly.

“Don’t stop what?” Sherlock queried with barely concealed panic.

“Seducing me.” John’s voice was eerily calm and matter-of-fact.

Seducing John?  Was that what he’d been doing? John had plenty of experience seducing and being seduced, so surely he would know.

“For about three weeks now, yeah?” John added.

Oh. 

“But you’re not gay…” Whatever made _that_ come out of his mouth?

“And you’re not interested,” John countered, then he punctuated the comment by reaching up to press a soft kiss on Sherlock’s mouth.  It was a momentary fleeting thing, and Sherlock surprised himself by not hating it.

Not interested – the words fell mocking on his ears, and yet John was gazing at him with something like hope in his face.  Their eyes locked for long moments, and then John reached out and brushed the backs of his fingers lightly down the side of Sherlock’s face and Sherlock’s brain exploded into action, a violent attempt to catalog and analyze not just the number of hairs on each metacarpal but also the differences in their temperature and the webbed pattern of lines on the knuckles and the location of each vein and the whorls of John’s thumb as it followed and _Enough_.  Too much in fact.  Far too much.  Before he knew what he was doing, he had pushed John’s hand away, and the lack of touch bit hard and tasted bloody and he closed his eyes and clenched his jaw and waited to feel how John would accomplish removing himself from the couch which Sherlock would give up willingly if he were a better person.

“Hey,” John’s voice was so soft he had to inch forward to hear. “I’m sorry.  We can go back to the way you were doing it before.”

Before he had finished the sentence his words had turned slurred and drowsy, and Sherlock slitted one eye open and began to wonder whether John had ever been sleepy in the first place.  He glared so hard that John eventually opened both his eyes, took in Sherlock’s face, and let out a very soft, very quiet, almost completely well-hidden giggle.  Which Sherlock couldn’t really fail to hear, since he was only inches from the doctor.  Which made Sherlock purse his own lips in an attempt not to respond in kind, but really, since when has John Watson giggling been something Sherlock can resist? And anyway, he felt like he’d been on a bloody roller coaster already over one kiss, a hand to the cheek, and a few pokes at John’s shoulder.


	4. Risotto

After the giggling subsided, Sherlock shook his head and said “My way is tiring, it seems.”

John said nothing.

“I didn’t mean it, the pushing,” Sherlock continued.  “It’s just, there’s so much. It all crashes in on me.”

John still said nothing.

Sherlock smiled carefully, measuring out the precise quantities of bitter and sweet and silly and sad, and murmured “It must be relaxing, not being me.  Tell me about being you.”

“About being me…? If I was seducing you…?” John’s tone said, do you really want to hear this? and yes, Sherlock did, suddenly he most definitely did.  “I’d do it slowly, then. I wouldn’t even touch you at first, I wouldn’t touch you for so long that when I did, there’d be enough space in your head, in that ridiculously vigilant brain of yours, but I’d trail just one finger from your ankle to your shoulder, I’d circle your beautiful throat with just the tip of my tongue. I’d listen to every breath, every movement of your tongue on your lips,  I’d find out just how hard I could suck before you’d growl or whimper.  I’d put my lips on your throat and feel you breathe.”

Sherlock was aware that his mouth was hanging open, his breathing suspiciously harsh, so he snapped shut like a codfish, but John had finished giving advice, and was just looking back at Sherlock, a faint challenge in his eyes.  Still, the words hung in his ears, pure humming keening singing desire that was nothing _at all_ like collecting data.

And Sherlock shivered, because he didn’t know how to do any of those things that John mentioned so casually.  He had tried a bit of that with Seb once, and Seb had shoved him aside and muttered something about being too stupid to aim straight.  That had been moments before Sherlock had mentally declared the experiment invalid.  The speed with which he had extricated himself from Seb’s bed that afternoon had, well, complicated their relationship.

So instead of doing any of those impossible things, Sherlock returned to the scar.  He ran his tongue along all the major lines, then he nipped at the smaller ones, then he sank his teeth in, just a little, to test how deep the scar tissue ran.  John didn’t lose his breath or whimper, though he may have growled, very quietly, almost meditatively, and for long minutes Sherlock licked and tasted and lost himself in minutiae.  He spiraled out, away from the original wound, and back in again, and he could have kept doing that forever, or at least until John got hungry again,  if he hadn’t got to John’s nipple on one of his forays, and John sucked in a suddenly violent breath and let it go and said “Jesus Sherlock!”  His voice was gritty and it was a moment before Sherlock even heard the individual words.  Then more evenly, John continued, “I like this, you know.  I really do.  This slow unfrantic exploration.  This is good.  But if you want to keep going this way, you probably don’t want _me_ getting desperate.”

And Sherlock finally noticed how John was rocking slightly, how his hand open and shut by his side, how his face flushed.  Right, friction, Sherlock remembered.  That was the missing element.  He could spare one hand while keeping his mouth where it was… And when he did, when he set his hand approximately over the obvious bulge in John’s jeans and pressed a little in time with the rocking, John moaned low and choked through a few breaths, and then his face relaxed marginally and he murmured something into Sherlock’s hair.

\---

So it was fine, and Sherlock went on exploring, and eventually he wanted to see the hip, to trace the pathways that led from being shot in the shoulder to walking with a limp, and that would involve John wearing less clothing.  Not that John seemed likely to complain.  But reaching down to undo someone else’s trousers, pressing into the softness of their belly to get the button loose, tugging at a zip over a hard cock, those intimate actions were beyond Sherlock right now.   Instead he straddled John’s knees, keeping his right hand where it was, and running one finger of the other along John’s waistband, dipping below when he could.  After a few passes, he pressed his cheek against John’s belly and tongued at the smooth cool skin.  John was jerking under his head, and making small strangled noises, almost like he was about to cry, so Sherlock turned to look up at him again and John pleaded “Sherlock love, please don’t stop now, you … I can’t… please…” which confused Sherlock again – had John always called him love?  He couldn’t remember at that moment.

When Sherlock’s fingers resumed their lonely meandering, John reached down and undid his own flies and Sherlock just looked at him with alien eyes.  After several painful moments, he grated out “I don’t know – I mean – I do know, but not with someone else, not with you, or anyone...” And then, after more painful moments, “tell me… what to do…”

But John merely smiled and said “You’re brilliant, Sherlock.”

Sherlock stared down at the helpless zip.

 “You’ll figure it out.  Or decide not to, it’s all fine.  I can dry-hump the pillow and cry myself back to sleep,” and Sherlock heard both the bravado and the absolution in John’s voice quite clearly.

“Or if not now, then next time,” John’s voice barely faltered. “You’re a very fast learner.”

“Then _tell_ me.” Sherlock commanded, implored, begged, whispered.

And finally John took pity on him.  In a low, careful voice he described how Sherlock could trail his fingers up the back of John’s hands, how to find the pulse points under his wrist, how to press kisses into the crook of his elbow.  He described how to use the tip of his tongue to draw a meandering line down John’s throat, how to lick along his collarbone, how to catch the nipple between his teeth and tug and what that would do to him. He described how Sherlock could press his palms against John’s belly and follow the sparse trail of blondish hair to his cock and how to encircle it and where the sensitive spots were.  And Sherlock knew it all already, it was simple anatomy, but in John’s rough, longing voice it came out like poetry.  When John fell silent, Sherlock’s own skin was tingling, burning, too tight for his bones.  He squeezed his eyes shut and breathed deep to trick his brain and reached for John and put John’s fingers on the back of his hand, then John’s tongue on Sherlock’s throat, then John’s palm on Sherlock’s belly.  Sherlock squeezed his eyes tighter still because god help him it was hard to keep that brain at bay, but he could, because everywhere that John touched he left a warm writhe of comfort with a hint of fire, and when his hand reached Sherlock’s waistband, Sherlock undid it shakily and was glad that when John’s hand got to his cock, there was something there to encircle.  Not an obvious bulge like John, nowhere near hard, but at least there was some evidence of effort, Sherlock thought.

When he looked up, John was gazing at him with unguarded delight that broke something in Sherlock.  Hastily he pushed at John’s undone jeans, then at his pants, until his cock was exposed.  It was thick, heavy and flushed.  John was murmuring strings of nonsense, stopping and starting and losing his place.  Sherlock couldn’t resist sniffing, then licking.  He raised his head and had a brief impression of John’s mouth bearing down on his, but in the last moment it was John who veered off and buried his face in Sherlock’s neck instead.  He clung to Sherlock as if he was being swept away, and rutted blindly against Sherlock’s leg.

And that’s when it happened.  Sherlock’s zealous prowling vigilant hyperactive brain just gave up protesting and let him plummet into quiet stillness, and his body reacted by rubbing its eyes open and stretching luxuriously, and Sherlock took a deep breath and pried John’s face away from his shoulder and pressed kisses against his forehead and eyes, then reached resolutely between their two bodies, gathering up John’s thick solid cock and his own not-quite-soft one in one hand.  With the slipperiness of John’s pre-come, he moved his hand up and down, not too fast, just moving. Then when it wasn’t cloying or galling, he moved a little faster, a little harder.  While Sherlock’s body slotted sensations into place, fitting touch and response and breath and voice into something that made sense, John was off in the distance, like a man with a sizeable head start just now.  So Sherlock made a supreme effort to observe, even if he wasn’t exactly in the same race as John, and just when he had decided that the doctor was beyond speaking, John turned to him, his lips shaping words with careful concentration. “This --  gonna be all right? with you?”

In answer, Sherlock sped up and pressed harder and John moaned and moaned again and then growled not at all softly, and within moments John was shuddering in his arms, spurting come between Sherlock’s fingers.

And then there were more long minutes that Sherlock’s only slightly chastened brain could use to organize, process, store all of this new information, and that was fine.  When John was coherent again, Sherlock curled up next to him, feeling flayed and comforted at the same time.  “So we could try it again?” he queried.

John hummed and grinned.  “You know, some people just stay in bed for three days.”

Sherlock just gaped at him.


	5. Eggs and Toast

In the end, they agreed on two days, mostly because John proposed it as an experiment. They slept, ate, and played for the first day and a half, not always in that order.  No actual fucking took place, or even anything that could serve as a metaphor for it, but many other things did.  Touching.  Delighting.  Tickling (mostly Sherlock).  Orgasms (that was John).  Later Sherlock would look back on that day and a half as the longest period of detente that his mind and his body had ever shared. 

Sometime after breakfast in bed of the second day (John wouldn't even hear of Sherlock cooking, and made his lover eggs and toast instead) Sherlock remembered the text from Lestrade.  And once he remembered, it struck him as odd that neither of their mobile phones had so much as chirped in the last day and a half. When interrogated, a smirking Captain Watson gave away nothing, but the phones were located, along with nine texts from Lestrade, the last one threatening to "give Anderson his due," and the detente ended abruptly as John pushed Sherlock out of bed.

These days, they still bicker, John still embarrasses Sherlock regularly on his blog, and Sherlock still blows up kitchen appliances.  They don't play as much as John would like – usually after a good case, but otherwise it's hard, being the caretaker of a brain like that.  Hard to connive or cajole it into being quiet, harder still to compel it to stay that way.  But Sherlock eats better when he cooks for John and sleeps better curled up next to John, so that's something.  And sometimes when John asks for risotto, his eyes go dreamy...


End file.
